34 replies to this topic

[cazidin]

Greetings MechWarriors. Today I have a simple question. A clever modder is in the process of porting Elder Scrolls II:Daggerfall into the Unity engine. Naturally, this made me curious. Would it be possible to port any of the assets* from MW:III or MW:IV into a modern engine to add HD graphics, resolution, shaders, etc?

*Assuming that you already own a copy of the game, do not intend to sell the work, and will obey any further laws required. I neither encourage or condone illegal use of software or assets created within, for, or in the general vicinity of.

[Metus regem]

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 10:22 AM, said:

Greetings MechWarriors. Today I have a simple question. A clever modder is in the process of porting Elder Scrolls II:Daggerfall into the Unity engine. Naturally, this made me curious. Would it be possible to port any of the assets* from MW:III or MW:IV into a modern engine to add HD graphics, resolution, shaders, etc?

*Assuming that you already own a copy of the game, do not intend to sell the work, and will obey any further laws required. I neither encourage or condone illegal use of software or assets created within, for, or in the general vicinity of.

Doubtful... as porting and remasters require access to the original game assets and have them be able to function in the new format.. doing it would more or less be building the game from the ground up.

That being said, I would love to see MW 2; Mercs redone with modern graphics, (hint, hint PGI this would be a way to go with MW 5; Mercs, as it already does story wise what you should do with MW 5) as it is, if you ask me the best MW game to date...

You could work for the various houses or be a sh*t disturber and work for ComStar, inciting war between the houses.

[cazidin]

Metus regem, on 23 May 2017 - 10:36 AM, said:

Doubtful... as porting and remasters require access to the original game assets and have them be able to function in the new format.. doing it would more or less be building the game from the ground up.

That being said, I would love to see MW 2; Mercs redone with modern graphics, (hint, hint PGI this would be a way to go with MW 5; Mercs, as it already does story wise what you should do with MW 5) as it is, if you ask me the best MW game to date...

You could work for the various houses or be a sh*t disturber and work for ComStar, inciting war between the houses.

What do you mean by requiring the original game assets? Do you mean artbook, source code, etc? I'm honestly also trying to figure out how the Daggerfall HD port was accomplished.

[Bud Crue]

Modern graphics/engine versions of all the original MW games (and expansions) would be something I would gladly spend disproportionate $ on.

[cazidin]

Bud Crue, on 23 May 2017 - 10:40 AM, said:

Modern graphics/engine versions of all the original MW games (and expansions) would be something I would gladly spend disproportionate $ on.

Honestly, I'm interested in modding and if this is something I could do* within a few months I'd be willing to do that. Plus I really want to be able to play on modern OS.

*Legally!

[Metus regem]

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 10:39 AM, said:

What do you mean by requiring the original game assets? Do you mean artbook, source code, etc? I'm honestly also trying to figure out how the Daggerfall HD port was accomplished.

The differacen between a remake and a remaster is this:

A remaster uses the older games source code as well as asset files such as models, places them into an updated but very similar engine (such as CryEngine 1 to CryEngine 2), using the newer engine to update the models and game assets to be compatible in the new engine.


A remake is a ground up new game, new assets, new files, new models and new engine. It may play like the original, but under the hood it is a completely new game.


As it stands with MW 2 (and all expansions / versions) I'm not sure whom may have the original files for it as they belonged to Activision, but it has since become abandoned ware... where as MW 3 was Zipper Interactive, but it to is now abandoned ware, that being said, I'm not sure we could find a modern engine that could read and understand the game assets for those games, should the source coded and or master copy ever be found, so they would require a remake as apposed to a remaster.

[cazidin]

Metus regem, on 23 May 2017 - 10:55 AM, said:

The differacen between a remake and a remaster is this:

A remaster uses the older games source code as well as asset files such as models, places them into an updated but very similar engine (such as CryEngine 1 to CryEngine 2), using the newer engine to update the models and game assets to be compatible in the new engine.


A remake is a ground up new game, new assets, new files, new models and new engine. It may play like the original, but under the hood it is a completely new game.


As it stands with MW 2 (and all expansions / versions) I'm not sure whom may have the original files for it as they belonged to Activision, but it has since become abandoned ware... where as MW 3 was Zipper Interactive, but it to is now abandoned ware, that being said, I'm not sure we could find a modern engine that could read and understand the game assets for those games, should the source coded and or master copy ever be found, so they would require a remake as apposed to a remaster.

Alright. Assuming that the source code for the engine cannot be found and no master copy exists, could any of the original assets other than sound, which has already been extracted for other mods, be recycled? Would any time be saved by having the original game and knowing it's aesthetic, controls, etc?

Also. Is this why porting MW:O to Unreal would be problematic?

[ScrapIron Prime]

Uh... There are no assets from MW2 to port. Or Daggerfall for that matter. they're block graphics, not wireframes. Heck, they're not even 2D sprites! You would have to model them from scratch, essentially writing the whole game with the same story arc as a previous game.

[sycocys]

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 11:03 AM, said:

Also. Is this why porting MW:O to Unreal would be problematic?

PGI is why porting MW:O to unreal would be problematic.

Most of their code is gibberish that they either can't or took 3 years to decipher enough to start to upgrade the game. Trying to port that over to another engine would be like pulling teeth with the jaws of life.

[Metus regem]

sycocys, on 23 May 2017 - 11:16 AM, said:

PGI is why porting MW:O to unreal would be problematic.

Most of their code is gibberish that they either can't or took 3 years to decipher enough to start to upgrade the game. Trying to port that over to another engine would be like pulling teeth with the jaws of life.

In their defense, PGI took an engine that doesn't normally do what they wanted, and made it do what they wanted. CryEngine is normally not server authoritative, PGI made it so. Now this was done due to PGI not having the capital to buy an engine like Unreal in the first place... Who knows what other things they made the engine do, it may no longer resemble CryEngine anymore as far as we know...

That being said, a good part of the issue we currently find ourselves in, Clan AC/s, non dual function LB's and only now starting to see New Tech, can be traced back to their first weapon programmer leaving PGI for what ever reasons, and either he didn't keep notes on what he did (not very likely) or whom ever replaced him (if anyone did) couldn't make heads or tails of the FrakinCode that is MWO... point in example, remember when PGI tried to adjust the RoF on IS AC/2's so that they wouldn't ghost heat themselves and they broke Clan lower arm actuators?


As for MWO being ported to Unreal, I think it is more likely that the CryEngine version will be dumped entreily, and they will use the assests in MW 5 to build MW:O Unreal from the ground up.

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 11:03 AM, said:

Alright. Assuming that the source code for the engine cannot be found and no master copy exists, could any of the original assets other than sound, which has already been extracted for other mods, be recycled? Would any time be saved by having the original game and knowing it's aesthetic, controls, etc?

Also. Is this why porting MW:O to Unreal would be problematic?

The sound files, maybe. But even then they would need to be in a format already understood by the new engine. They keyboard layouts can all be found online so that shouldn't be an issue, the issue is someone having the time to write the game from the ground up, as well as do all of the models from the ground up...

I find this issue with a lot of people, they don't seem to understand that it's not a simple job to take assets from one thing and try to use it in another... It's almost as bad as trying to explain why in MWO engine swapping or adding Endo Steel should require stupid amounts of C-bills and time at least while at best we shouldn't be able to do it. Same for mounting a Gauss Rifle where a MG is mounted stock...

[Coolant]

Mektek already kinda did that...they added HD resolutions to the game when it went free to play. Before Mektek I think the max resolution was only 800x600 but you could go all the way to 1920x1080 and maybe even further thanks to Mektek (I think they even added multiple monitor support).

They also added the ability to set draw distance. Before Mektek nothing would draw beyond 1000m...all you saw was grey fog. Mektek made it possible to set draw distance in servers.

The added HD resolutions plus greater draw distance made outdated graphics much better.

Edited by Coolant, 23 May 2017 - 01:03 PM.

[Ghogiel]

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 10:43 AM, said:

Honestly, I'm interested in modding and if this is something I could do* within a few months I'd be willing to do that. Plus I really want to be able to play on modern OS.

*Legally!

NOPE.

You wouldn't get far enough into even learning any aspect of game making to do something so ambitious. Especially not solo in spare time.

Sorry to say there are 1000s of man hours across many disciplines to make progress with such a feat... its mostly why it hasn't been done already XD

[cazidin]

Metus regem, on 23 May 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

The sound files, maybe. But even then they would need to be in a format already understood by the new engine. They keyboard layouts can all be found online so that shouldn't be an issue, the issue is someone having the time to write the game from the ground up, as well as do all of the models from the ground up...

I find this issue with a lot of people, they don't seem to understand that it's not a simple job to take assets from one thing and try to use it in another... It's almost as bad as trying to explain why in MWO engine swapping or adding Endo Steel should require stupid amounts of C-bills and time at least while at best we shouldn't be able to do it. Same for mounting a Gauss Rifle where a MG is mounted stock...

Right. I never thought this would be an easy task. I'm asking out of curiosity, how long would it take? If the models themselves can't be recycled what about the animations, textures or (when applicable) meshes? The UI, story, maps (mostly), etc should be simple enough.

If not porting to a new engine then what about retrofitting the old one? What skills are necessary and could a small team accomplish this task in a reasonable time frame?

Edited by cazidin, 23 May 2017 - 01:52 PM.

[Metus regem]

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 01:45 PM, said:

Right. I never thought this would be an easy task. I'm asking out of curiosity, how long would it take? If the models themselves can't be recycled what about the animations, textures or (when applicable) meshes? The UI, story, maps (mostly), etc should be simple enough.

If not porting to a new engine then what about retrofitting the old one? What skills are necessary and could a small team accomplish this task in a reasonable time frame?

I'd venture that the only thing you could well and honestly salvage from MW 2/3/4 would be their stories, everything else would be incompatible with modern game engines.

Here's the thing about old engines and pushing them as far as one can, look at Elder Scrolls 2 and Fallout 4, both used the same engine that had been upgraded over time, but for Fallout 4 the engine hit a braking point. Bethesda cannot push it any more, so their next elder scrolls game or fallout game needs to use a new engine.

As for time frame to do what you are asking about, well it depends on several factors:

• How skilled is your team?
  
• How familiar is your team with the two engines?
  
• How dedicated is your team?
  
• What kind of incentives are you going to offer your team to invest well over a year at a minimum to make this happen?

Small teams can do a lot in a short period of time, look at HBS and their battletech game, a new game from the ground up using MWO's models in just over a year to beta is a short turn around time, where as something like Mass Effect Andromeda was years in the making for a massive power house like BioWare and EA.

[Ghogiel]

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 01:45 PM, said:

Right. I never thought this would be an easy task. I'm asking out of curiosity, how long would it take? If the models themselves can't be recycled what about the animations, textures or (when applicable) meshes? The UI, story, maps (mostly), etc should be simple enough.

If not porting to a new engine then what about retrofitting the old one?

None of that. Porting to a new engine sounds like you can reuse stuff like code, which just isn't quite right.

And there isn't any retroffiting DX9-12 into an old engine you don't have source code to or without some pretty extensive experience already. You wouldn't be asking this question if you already had the ability required.

What *I* would do is use a current industry standard engine, eg unity or UE4. Forget resuing any and all art assets from MW3-4, except for maybe mech to play with to get your mech code working. Hell you could just even use a MWO model at this point as all you want is a base mesh to have on hand to use as a PoC.

Then figure out how to get mechs working in your engine, it'll be a bit by bit process as you have to figure out dmg models, dmg states, movement systems, weapon hard points, then mechlab, Just keep adding layers of functionality. then somewhere down the line you need mech AI.

While copying a design does save a phenominal amount of time and trial and error in the development process, the entire project would be a complete remake in the end. A remkae of a project that a dev studio spent likely a year or 2 to complete.

Even MWLL, whose content is entirely PvP took 1000s of man hours from a few dozen key indivuals and dozens more people contributing in various capacities.

[cazidin]

Metus regem, on 23 May 2017 - 02:09 PM, said:

I'd venture that the only thing you could well and honestly salvage from MW 2/3/4 would be their stories, everything else would be incompatible with modern game engines.

Here's the thing about old engines and pushing them as far as one can, look at Elder Scrolls 2 and Fallout 4, both used the same engine that had been upgraded over time, but for Fallout 4 the engine hit a braking point. Bethesda cannot push it any more, so their next elder scrolls game or fallout game needs to use a new engine.

As for time frame to do what you are asking about, well it depends on several factors:

• How skilled is your team?
  
• How familiar is your team with the two engines?
  
• How dedicated is your team?
  
• What kind of incentives are you going to offer your team to invest well over a year at a minimum to make this happen?

Small teams can do a lot in a short period of time, look at HBS and their battletech game, a new game from the ground up using MWO's models in just over a year to beta is a short turn around time, where as something like Mass Effect Andromeda was years in the making for a massive power house like BioWare and EA.

Why would it be incompatible though? I'm just curious of, let's say I took a simple sprite from an old game like Doom and threw it in unity. What makes this sprite incompatible with the engine?

1.Proficient with art and adept at learning but minimal knowledge of programming.
2.Reasonably familiar with Unity. Zero knowledge of the older engine.
3.Moderately.
4.Relief from boredom.

Ghogiel, on 23 May 2017 - 02:14 PM, said:

None of that. Porting to a new engine sounds like you can reuse stuff like code, which just isn't quite right.

And there isn't any retroffiting DX9-12 into an old engine you don't have source code to or without some pretty extensive experience already. You wouldn't be asking this question if you already had the ability required.

What *I* would do is use a current industry standard engine, eg unity or UE4. Forget resuing any and all art assets from MW3-4, except for maybe mech to play with to get your mech code working. Hell you could just even use a MWO model at this point as all you want is a base mesh to have on hand to use as a PoC.

Then figure out how to get mechs working in your engine, it'll be a bit by bit process as you have to figure out dmg models, dmg states, movement systems, weapon hard points, then mechlab, Just keep adding layers of functionality. then somewhere down the line you need mech AI.

While copying a design does save a phenominal amount of time and trial and error in the development process, the entire project would be a complete remake in the end. A remkae of a project that a dev studio spent likely a year or 2 to complete.

Even MWLL, whose content is entirely PvP took 1000s of man hours from a few dozen key indivuals and dozens more people contributing in various capacities.

That presumes that one could rip the mechs from MW:O. If that's possible, I amn't sure if it's legal even for a fan/mod project. The rest is good advice. Thank you.

[James The Fox Dixon]

The models are incompatible for three main reasons: file format, low poly models, and low res textures. If you took a 150 poly Mad Cat from MW2 and threw it into Unity you'd first have the problem in dealing with file format. Engines of the past used very inefficient file formats which is why they no longer are used.

The average polygon count of a mech in MW2 was about 150 give or take due to video card restrictions. Have you ever seen a low poly model on a modern video card? It's horrible looking to the point that a 5 year old child's art is a masterpiece.

The final part is the texture for the model. The average texture size was 32x32. Compare that to the current texture size being 2048 x 2048. The old 32x32 looks awful on modern video cards. Altering the texture size to modern standards does not fix the problem since that 2048 x 2048 is slapped onto a 150 polygon model. That looks terrible and doesn't exactly line up with the model.

The average polygon count of a MWO model is roughly 2,000 polygons preculled. This is why the MWO mechs look better in comparison to MW2 mechs.

[Metus regem]

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 02:20 PM, said:

Why would it be incompatible though? I'm just curious of, let's say I took a simple sprite from an old game like Doom and threw it in unity. What makes this sprite incompatible with the engine?

I'll use an extreme example here take an off the shelf copy of Microsoft works from 1995 and try to get it to run a modern iMac....the software is not compatible with the operating system.

Now to apply that to what I'm talking about, the engine that would've been used to create MW 2 is likely not in a format Unity would understand, meaning that everything that was done to make MW 2 work would have to be redone from the ground up. In other words, it might be better to save the hassle in the first place and start at square one.

[Ghogiel]

cazidin, on 23 May 2017 - 02:20 PM, said:

Why would it be incompatible though? I'm just curious of, let's say I took a simple sprite from an old game like Doom and threw it in unity. What makes this sprite incompatible with the engine?

1.Proficient with art and adept at learning but minimal knowledge of programming.
2.Reasonably familiar with Unity. Zero knowledge of the older engine.
3.Moderately.
4.Relief from boredom.



That presumes that one could rip the mechs from MW:O. If that's possible, I amn't sure if it's legal even for a fan/mod project. The rest is good advice. Thank you.

MWO models are obtainable in your game files and can be converted to objs, which you could export to any other game engine with content tools from your 3d package.

You wouldn't be breaking any laws by using one as a placeholder in your development process, part of the to do list would be making some new assets anyway.

I would give you a 3d model to arse with of a SMN I made like 7 years ago now if you really was getting anywhere.

Edited by Ghogiel, 23 May 2017 - 02:39 PM.

[cazidin]

James The Fox Dixon, on 23 May 2017 - 02:32 PM, said:

The models are incompatible for three main reasons: file format, low poly models, and low res textures. If you took a 150 poly Mad Cat from MW2 and threw it into Unity you'd first have the problem in dealing with file format. Engines of the past used very inefficient file formats which is why they no longer are used.

The average polygon count of a mech in MW2 was about 150 give or take due to video card restrictions. Have you ever seen a low poly model on a modern video card? It's horrible looking to the point that a 5 year old child's art is a masterpiece.

The final part is the texture for the model. The average texture size was 32x32. Compare that to the current texture size being 2048 x 2048. The old 32x32 looks awful on modern video cards. Altering the texture size to modern standards does not fix the problem since that 2048 x 2048 is slapped onto a 150 polygon model. That looks terrible and doesn't exactly line up with the model.

The average polygon count of a MWO model is roughly 2,000 polygons preculled. This is why the MWO mechs look better in comparison to MW2 mechs.

Right. Old games couldn't afford to be 30-50 GB in size. We simply didn't have HDDs large enough. Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way. Going back to Elder Scrolls, the third and fourth title of the series both have received a variety of HD model updates. Is this a simple resize of the original textures, or redrawn completely at a much higher resolution? Could the originals be used as a base? Could the file format be changed?

Metus regem, on 23 May 2017 - 02:32 PM, said:

I'll use an extreme example here take an off the shelf copy of Microsoft works from 1995 and try to get it to run a modern iMac....the software is not compatible with the operating system.

Now to apply that to what I'm talking about, the engine that would've been used to create MW 2 is likely not in a format Unity would understand, meaning that everything that was done to make MW 2 work would have to be redone from the ground up. In other words, it might be better to save the hassle in the first place and start at square one.

Can't go from DOS box to PC easily. I'm trying to find a better way than just remaking them from scratch, should I pursue such a project, but I guess there isn't really a better way huh?

Ghogiel, on 23 May 2017 - 02:39 PM, said:

MWO models are obtainable in your game files and can be converted to objs, which you could export to any other game engine with content tools from your 3d package.

You wouldn't be breaking any laws by using one as a placeholder in your development process, part of the to do list would be making some new assets anyway.

I would give you a 3d model to arse with of a SMN I made like 7 years ago now if you really was getting anywhere.

Since MW:O is newer, the models, textures, etc could be used as placeholders I guess but they wouldn't have the same style.

Though, MW:O's art style combined with the old games story and improved gameplay? That'd be interesting*.

PGI! Make this happen at some point! Maybe with MW:V...

Edited by cazidin, 23 May 2017 - 02:47 PM.